As the Civil War began, virtually every prominent black leader had shown a willingness to accept aid from the ACS [American Colonization Society] or from other white colonizationists, such as the Republican politicians who advocated homesteads for blacks in Central America. Yet at no time in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries did a significant proportion of the black population seem willing to leave the United Stares.... However disillusioned they may have become, too many American blacks knew at least vaguely of the genuine malarial fever or yellow fever that decimated the Americo-Liberians. As Edwin S. Redkey also points out, the American blacks who emigrated to Liberia did not send money back to friends and relatives to help them reach the Promised Land, as often happened among Europeans who scouted out America; instead, the Americo-Liberians asked for money to help them return home. P.132, THE PROBLEM OF SLAVERY IN THE AGE OF EMANCIPATION by David Brion Davis (2014)
Posted on: Wed, 02 Jul 2014 11:15:20 +0000